


Terminus Est

by snagov



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Android Castiel (Supernatural), Dystopia, End of the World, First Time, Forbidden Love, Love, M/M, POV Dean Winchester, Post-Apocalypse, Romance, Science Fiction, medieval analogue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-26
Updated: 2020-06-26
Packaged: 2021-03-04 07:09:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24929716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snagov/pseuds/snagov
Summary: The gates close every night at the final, ninth, toll of the bell. Nox. They have never failed. Dean has forgotten the time and is outside. No one survives a night out past the gates after Nox. That is the time of darkness; that is where the Others walk.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 10
Kudos: 42
Collections: The Destiel Fan Survey Favs Collection





	Terminus Est

_"Those masterful images because complete  
__Grew in pure mind but out of what began?  
__A mound of refuse or the sweepings of a street,  
__Old kettles, old bottles, and a broken can,  
__Old iron, old bones, old rags, that raving slut  
__Who keeps the till. Now that my ladder's gone  
__I must lie down where all the ladders start  
__In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart."_

W.B. Yeats, The Circus Animals' Desertion

**The children like to gather on the beach.**

They sit around, throwing rocks at the sea. Laughing at bug-eyed fish, digging treasures out from the sand. The man always sits at the end. They like him. He tells them stories about the village. About the strange things they unearth from the sand. Bottle caps and styrofoam, vinyl netting and tin cans. Other things, too.

They call the little village _Crake_ , though it is hardly a village. There are a few huts. It is a drain catch, a place to get stuck. The man likes to watch the sea and the waves, collect shells. When the children take their rafts out, sometimes past the horizon, he always asks about their adventures. If they found islands, some measure of land.

"Tell us a story, Thursday," they say. "Tell us a story of a hundred years ago." (The man's name is Thursday. They had asked him why once. He had said _I was born on a Thursday in the rain._ ) He looks up from the fire, prodding the wood so it evens out. The embers stoked. Driftwood. Dead things. The smell of seaweed and salt.

"Very well," he says, "sit down."

* * *

In the beginning **,** there was iron. The Iron Age came before the Information Age, which came before the Second Iron Age. My father called me Thursday. It was a joke. No one said it was a strange name until much later.

* * *

What age are we in now, Thursday?

_The Age of Stories._

Will you tell me a story?

_If you sit down, yes._

* * *

He is late.

The bells are tolling. _One, two, three._ The gates close every night at nine o'clock. _Nox._ Yes, they always close exactly on the ninth toll of the Cathedral bell. _Four, five, six._ Yes, they have never failed. Yes, he is well and truly fucked. _And not even in the fun way. Fuck. Godfuckindammit._ Dean Winchester is a man who always knows the score. He knows that no one has ever survived a night out past the gates after Nox. That is the time of darkness; that is where the Others walk.

You must be careful of the Others. (It is the only thing he has ever been sure of. He is as certain of it as he is of his own hair and teeth.)

 _Seven, eight, nine._ The gates and their slamming shut. There is no way to pass through. No cracks, no osmosis.

He curses. _Motherfuckityfuckingshit._ The bag of fish slaps against his thigh, wet with river water. River water is rarely clear, mixing with silt and dirt, moss and rot. The water runs in brown streaks on his sunbrown skin. He has eyes like the river water, green as the muck. He stares at the impenetrable wall. The gates loom. Black as basalt. He does not know what they are made of. They are the only material that he cannot name. They have existed since before him. The rumor goes that they have existed before the city itself was built. Dean cannot imagine the city without the gates nor the gates without the city. It is strange to think of the gates sitting here, on this patch of earth, cradling nothing.

Now, the gates are the symbol of the city. Of Terminus Est, first of her name, with her greystone roads and black asphalt streets. Her white-columned Cathedral, her red-poppied fields. _I hope I get to see you again. I am such a goddamn idiot, what the hell._ His mother will miss him. His brother too. (He thinks of Sammy, fourteen-years-old and gangly, never sure where to put his knees during the Vesper prayer.) Yes, they will miss him, his smile, his skill at brewing ale, his skill at playing Ba. Yes, his Ba team will miss him too, the sorry lot of them. Benny and Jo, Charlie and Jack. Good riddance to them and their pigskin ball (they were all awful anyway).

 _So goddamn fucked._ Scan the treeline for movement. They will come from the trees. He is not even sure what he is looking for. Hoist the sack further on his broad shoulders, biting his lip ragged and raw. They will come from the trees, yet the trees might be safer. They will provide cover, places to hide. There is no growth near the gates. Just dust and grass. It is open; it is exposed. What will they look like? It’s a favorite pastime, told around fires, over ales and lagers.

“They’re just bones,” Bobby had said, “Bones and rags.”

“No,” Sam said, frowning in that way that he does when he is thinking, remembering words scrawled in black ink, bonepale vellum pages. Stretched parchment. “They’ve got strange light.” (Sam is always the one to trust. He and his memory. He can tell you the exact position of the book in the library, the precise page he had read it from.)

“Like what? Ghosts or some shit?” Dean had shrugged, tucking down into his chair, his bowlegged body sprawled wide. He likes to be a challenge. Where the others straighten up when Father Noah passes, Dean slouches more instead. He plays with a landmine, buried hundreds of years ago. A found grenade. He knows about the Unspeakables in their dark-windowed hovel on Copper Street, their too-much smiles, their too-bright eyes, ordering thumbscrews by the dozen. He should be careful (he is not good at careful).

“Could be.”

“You’re full of it,” Dean had laughed, “I don’t believe in any of that shit.” (Yet, no one goes in the forest, no one stays out after Nox. There is an old saying, _there are no atheists in foxholes._ )

He has been catching fish in the river. Bluegill and Northern pike, eels and black carp. Sometimes catfish (though he dislikes those, they always taste like the mud they eat). He throws those back in. His mother has always scolded him for spending too many days at the river, for wandering too far from the gates. She is always nervous, she listens to the stories of the Others more than most. Her pale hair, her long hands, her anxious frown.

It is impossible when you are ruled by hunger. Dean is starving. He needs to _know._ Where does the river go, how deep is the forest? The curiosity aches in him, the wanderlust. He strays farther and farther every week, meandering with the river from its start. His mother says that the stars had gotten his birth wrong. He had been born in the winter to the air. But she says that he has always had too much water in him. Even as a child, he was too hard to pick up; he would always run through her fingers. She had expected another air sign, like herself, and he had been born, lying to her instead.

Dean Winchester, disappointment.

He looks at the gates, his frowning, lichen eyes. The gates are impermeable. They will not open again for twelve hours. There is no way up. They are too tall to swing a vine over. He is scrappy, yes, but the gates are black and smooth as ice, as polished granite. There is nowhere to put your fingers, nowhere to stick your foot.

Twelve hours.

The Others will come. The guards tell the tales of their hauntings, their ghostly twin lights. The only question is where should he stand? In the trees or by the gate? Hidden or exposed? The treeline will take him further away. The gates will not open until the Others leave, until the start of dawn. Dean goes for the trees. He's a good climber. The rumor is that they are not. (For once, the casual blasphemer, this thorn in Father Noah's shoe, prays to God. _Just get me through the night. Then anything, anything you want._ )

* * *

From his perch in the trees, he can see over the wall. Yes, the bright white spire of St. Snow's Cathedral. You can follow that spire down, through the masonry, the blind arcades set into the stone, the pointed arches of the stained-glass windows, the flying buttresses, the cool flagstones of the floor (where, below, the saints are buried). Dean doesn't have two coins to rub together to claim anything nice, but the Cathedral's beauty is open, it belongs to everyone.

There haven't been many saints. Father Noah is the oldest man in Terminus Est. He is the first of all saints, the first of all things. Father Noah had founded Terminus Est, here on the island, yes. He had been the one to break ground for the Cathedral, he had saved the lot of them from the Before, he is the one that tells the Story. It is a strange book, from a time Dean had never known, written in a language he cannot read. It doesn’t matter. They gather every week for the reading of the Story. Father Noah's favorite story is of Saint Snow, who had led Noah to the boat. He tells the Stories of Exodus. Out of Egypt; out of England. Israel and Plymouth Rock.

He can hear the hymn. Hundreds of voices gather in the cathedral, lifting their voices in prayer and song. _Nessun Dorma_ , the Vespers hymn, which Noah had also taken into his little boat, had also saved from Before.

Mostly, to Dean, to everyone, Terminus Est is just the City. He knows the streets like all curious once-children do. He can feel them in his soles, his calves. He knows where to turn, to meander. He knows the feel of Jasper Street from Stone Street by the cobblestones of one and the asphalt of the other. He knows the long lights of the tavern on Peartree; he knows the stench of the tanneries on the westside, the sick smell of Butcher’s Row.

His bed will be lonely tonight. Yes, his little stuff of straw and cotton. Clean, dry, soft. He likes to listen to the sound of his farm from his bed, the call of the roosters, the hum of cicadas. The whinny of his crow-black horse, Baby. The farms are at the edge of the city, the last stop before the wall. It is quiet and peaceful there, just Dean and his bed, winking in and out of existence every night in a pile of straw.

* * *

They have lights.

That is the strangest thing about these old creatures, the Others. The guards that monitor the wall whisper it from their perches at the top. _You can see them in the dark,_ they say, _always two of them._ Dean knows that they are from Before. There is not much that can be said of Before. Father Noah had only told them of the End of Times. Yes, there had been a Before, which had been wicked. God had sent a glorious and blessed flood like an eraser, like a bit of steel wool to scrub the earth clean. Father Noah had gathered the righteous children, taken him aboard his boat, had said _I know a place we can go._ Dean supposes that the oldest must have memories of that time, though no one speaks of Before. Old, rotten, wicked. Good riddance.

The Others and the sea, this little island. That is all they have left in the world.

Do you need much else?

There is a pair of dancing lights in the distance. He squints, wondering if they might be a pair of fireflies. His rough fingers cling to a hawthorn. He can still see the tall spires of the cathedral behind the gates, rising pure and white from the safety of a tall and secure wall. Father Noah will be leading the evening prayer, yes, they will be bowing their heads, giving their thanks to Heaven. There is a lord who sits up in the back of the church, watching from a carved chair. But everyone knows that Father Noah holds the power, yes, this curious balance of land and church. Lords are given their right through divinity and divinity is in the Father's hands.

He keeps his eye out for the lights. They come and go. He cannot tell the rhyme nor reason. If they draw closer or farther. He wonders if the Others have a good sense of smell. Jaws that lock. Teeth for shredding sinew, draining blood.

The fish are starting to stink. _Fuck,_ he thinks. _Sorry, Sammy, I gotta toss these._ He had hoped to save the squid at least. Sammy could pull out the ink sac, the salted blackness within, mix it with gum arabic and pull out his vellum and his parchment. Sammy, who aches to work in the scriptorium, this natural letterer, this regular academic. Dean loves to watch him work. The novices in their black robes, coaxing ink from nuts. Dean brings the materials home so Sam can practice. The gallnuts from the shrub oaks, ferrous sulphate from the river. Sam would crush the nuts up and leave them in rainwater by the fire. He adds the ferrous sulphate, mixes it in with a little stick. Dean likes to watch, sitting back, a beer in his hand, as the mixture slowly moves from dark brown to black as pitch, black as spiders. Sam would only need to add a little gum arabic now, adjust the viscosity, bottle it up.

Dean isn't meant for scriptoriums or libraries, he only dreams about the trees and the river, the things beyond the gates. He wanders the long greenstone ridges, tracing his way by the white pine, the deposits of chlorastrolite. His greatest find is the lake near the edge, in the southwest corner, the strange ruined ship at the bottom, seen through the crystal water. A ship never known to Terminus Est.

He has to toss the fish, though the sound might draw attention. The smell is likely to be worse. He heaves them with some force a few yards away. Perhaps, if the Others come, they will key to that instead. Not he in his treeperch, trying not to breathe.

Claws like night terrors. Gunpowder. He knows they haunt the forest. They are killing machines. He has heard they are the size of houses, their teeth like hooks. They’ve got iron shaving blood. (Do they have blood? Hard to say. It doesn’t seem right for a monster to have blood. Blood implies a heart to pump it. The old in and out.)

" _Hello."_

(Heart stop.)

He scrambles, knocking his head against the bark, scraping his forehead, falling out of the tree. It is a long fall from the sky to perdition. The ground is hard. Bruises will come later, mottled plum and fetid peach. He touches the spot on his face and it comes back sticky, smelling of iron. His heart a racehorse, fast as a sailfish.

"...who's there?"

There is a tight grip on his shoulder, strong enough to bruise. Twin fireflies of concerned light center in the darkness, in Dean's line of sight. They belong to someone. Eyes. The grip hoists him to his feet.

"Are you leaking?" It is a man. A strange man, tilting his head to the left. He is the color of moonlight, of quicksilver, a gun barrel, the knife in Dean's boot. It looks like he has swallowed too much of it, as if he has rolled in graphite and come away stained.

"The fuck do you mean _leaking_?" Dean asks, terror closing his throat. He breathes rapidly, as fast as the washerwomen with their linens, plunging back and forth into the cold water. "Who are you?"

"I'm an angel."

"Okay, buddy, you're gonna have to keep goin' there, cause I have no idea what that is."

"My name is Castiel," the figure says, almost cautiously. Dean has never seen an Other, though he is certain that this is one. He is not sure what he had expected. Brimstone, maybe. Grotesque wings and curled claws, a forked tongue, a jaw to shatter bone. Castiel looks like him, really. Two arms, two legs, two hands, two feet. One head. A nervous expression. Well, and the blue-light eyes. The metal skin. The strange, panicked look on the Other's face. It is oddly compelling, the square forehead and the sharp jaw. Eyes like stars. His mouth reminds Dean of oranges, their segments nestled together.

"Are you a Human?" Castiel asks. Dean hears the catch of terror in the metallic voice, the hush of awe. "I've heard stories about you."

* * *

I need a story, Thursday.

_What kind of story?_

A ghost story.

* * *

He pulls the knife. It is hard in his hand, as sure as aconite in the well. The moonlight glints on the razor edge like it gleams off of the reflective skin of the Other. What had Dean expected? The Other is preternaturally beautiful. Dark haired and silverskinned, eyes like pale blue planets lit from within. The moon and the stars and this Other’s eyes, the only lights in the world. _That's why there are always two lights, it's their eyes._

“Alright, buddy, yeah, we're halfway there. You wanna finish that? I'm human, so, what the fuck are you?” The knife offers its own story, _I will cut you down where you stand._

“An angel.”

“You _said_ that. That ain't helpin' me any, ol' Demon Eyes. What the hell does that mean?”

Castiel sighs, “Artificial Natural Global Empathy -"

“Right, I get it, kinda. You're like... I know what all those words mean individually but -“

“Machine, I think your people say.” _Gizmo sapiens._ Dean has always grasped things quickly. He knows that Castiel is not _human,_ so add up the metallic surface, the penetrative eyes, the whirring of tiny fans, the purr of the machine.

“Your people?” Dean asks. _I want to hear you say it._ Despite the stories, despite the warnings, Castiel does not seem like he has claws nor fangs, that he might go for the throat. Dean and his strange gut instinct, that feeling of Castiel's certain grip on his shoulder, telling him that there is something safe here. He lowers the point of the knife.

“Humans. You are human, correct, mister -?”

“Yes,” Dean slowly slides the knife back in his boot. “Dean. Dean Winchester. I thought you hunted humans. ”

Castiel looks at him curiously, “Why?” A pause, the hands (ten fingers, just like Dean's) spread wide and open. “You made us.”

 _What?_ "Look, I don't trust you as far as I can throw a fuckin Ba ball and that ain't very far so you gotta - "

"You are hurt," Castiel says, wrapping his cold, mirror-painted hand around Dean's arm, "Humans can be hurt. My human-knowledge is rusty. Come with me."

Perhaps it is the unearthly gravel of the voice, the riptide of the grip. Dean has never been good at following, yet he goes.

* * *

"Where are we goin', Cas?" Castiel has not let go of his wrist, his fingers against Dean's pulse, holding Dean's heartbeat in his hands.

"To aid, Dean Winchester," Castiel says. Dean likes the way the Other says his name, with distinct syllables, clean and distinct, as if he holds each note like a pearl in his mouth. (Even Dean does not pronounce his name like that, with clarity. He slurs it all together like he might slam a beer, shoot a whiskey back. Quick and over.)

"You can just say Dean, you know. You don't gotta say the whole thing."

"Yes, Dean."

The cave is deep in the forest. _Why the fuck am I following you, you fuckin' metal-ass creeper?_ Still, he goes. His gut says to trust Castiel and Dean has always been a man of his gut. So he goes. Through the wood and the bark, the shrubs. The beech and the birch, the jack pine, the northern red oak. Through the red maple, the eastern hemlock. Past the cottonwood, the poplar. The trees and their hush of leaves, gossiping about them all the way.

The cave stands before them, hewn into rock. It is a mouth, open and wide, unsettlingly warm. (Dean has always hated the darkness, has hated being underground. He holds his breath when he passes graveyards. When asked to help carry things down into the undercroft, into the crypt, he counts the seconds until he is released back up into the light.)

"Come on," Cas says, pulling him to the mouth of the cave. Dean hesitates. Darkness and the earth causing his skin to crawl, the gooseflesh of fear. The earth keeps our dead in the dark, under her covers of soil and clay. We do not descend willingly.

"It's fuckin' dark in there."

Castiel tilts his head. "Oh," he says, then brightens suddenly. "Human vision." He nods, pulls back the tip of his finger and shoots a flame into the air.

Dean blinks. "Um, neat trick, that."

Castiel furrows an ink-dark brow. "Trick?"

"Nevermind," he says. "Why this fuckin' ghost-infested horrorshow cave? Can't you stay out here?"

"There are wolves out here," Castiel says. "And there is medical aid inside. A fire is less likely to be seen."

"Fine," he says, "Lead on, Moses." Yes, onward to the Promised Land. To Graceland, to Eden. To Plymouth Rock, where we strike land and make ourselves a garden.

* * *

The aid is a medical kit. The design is unknown to Dean, looking odd and old-fashioned. He is used to the doctors of Terminus Est. They are modern men, carefully balancing the four humors of the body. They know where to apply the leeches and when to pull them off again. They are men of the stars, warning of dangerous juxtapositions of the planets. When Jupiter and Mercury seem too close, they had warned everyone to stay inside. Castiel's treatments, which he explains quietly in a low voice, seem strange and antiquated from stories of the past. _Hydrogen peroxide, gauze, bacitracin._ Still, Dean supposes, old medicine is better than nothing.

Castiel leans very close as he works, his chest hovering over Dean's, his deeply concentrating frown close to Dean's eyes. Dean studies his mouth, the slight part, wondering what an Other is like. (No one has been this close to him in months. Dean is a creature of touch. His heart races. He cannot blame fear.)

Silence is stronger in stone rooms with stone floors. It echoes off of the walls of the cave. There are few places for the silence to be swallowed up. In the absence, it is only breath that can be heard. “So,” he says, “What do you do with yourself out here? Where'd this kit come from anyway?"

Castiel is close to him, too close. The unnatural eyes examining the damage to Dean's skin. Dean's breathing is rapid, scattershot-rapid. He can feel the coolness of Castiel's body from even centimeters away, as if he might press his fevered face to a pane of glass. Dean studies the Other with half-starved eyes, voracious in the firelight. Castiel is half-shadowed, pressing strange-smelling cloths to his wound. "It was left by hunters as supplies," Castiel says.

"Wait, who was hunting all the way out here?"

"Men. From before you came," Castiel says, "Before your city." _Before Dean, before Terminus Est, before the End of the World._

"Do you remember Before?" Dean asks. It tumbles out with his breath. It has always been his curse, this curiosity. Castiel digs around in the medical kit. It is metal, white. A large red cross in the center. He pulls out some strange bandages. Self-adhesive. Oddly sticky. Castiel places them on the wound. His hands grazing Dean's skin. Dean shivers.

"Yes," Castiel said. Dean finds himself wanting to ask everything. He is hungry for answers. For other stories. (He is hungry for the metalscape of Castiel's rough voice. It spikes into him, from his crown to his spine. Electric as a lightning bolt, dangerous as a shrike.)

"Were you there in the Beginning?" He has always wondered about the Beginning. Father Noah said it started with a garden but Dean had always had more questions. _Where did that come from then?_ Dean had asked. _Child, have faith,_ Father Noah would say. Dean had always felt shamed, his child-cheeks burning, accused of being faithless. Curiosity, he has learned, is incompatible with faith. He cannot stifle his hunger, his ache, his questions. He gives up on faith instead.

"No, Dean," Castiel brushes the grass from his dark woolen pant. Dean follows the hand up. The white shirt, the long, tan coat. Clothes out of time. Not something from the modern world. "That was too long past."

"When was that?" Dean asks, frowning.

"4.5 billion years ago."

"How old are you?"

"One hundred and fifty years."

"Huh," Dean says. He whistles. _Fuckin' hell._ He has never before considered that Father Noah might have lied. But it is hard to doubt the blue light of Castiel's eyes. Castiel does not lie. He is not created that way. Terminus Est is a yes or no place. Black or white, up or down. You may choose to believe in Father Noah, in the Cathedral, in the Story, or you may not. (Everyone knows that those who do not are in danger of a visit. The Unspeakables of Copper Street, who come in the night, who never knock on your door. They have a key to every lock, to every window. Dean sleeps with a knife under his pillow, waiting for the inevitable visit.) The one option that has never been considered is to neither believe nor disbelieve, but to believe in something else entirely.

Father Noah had told them the Story. Yes, he had stood up in the Cathedral, reading from the Book. Here, in a cave with a fire, Castiel tells another Story.

Castiel tends the fire. It had been simple, as if by magic. He has no need of a flint, his fingertip had rolled back to shoot fire. It had caught on the dead wood. Dean looks up, realizing that the cave has a natural vent for the smoke. It is an oddly comfortable place, even in the deep earth. Even with the shadows on the walls.

“So, Cas,” he pokes a stick at the fire, his stomach growling. “What’s it like out here?”

Castiel frowns (Dean learns that Castiel does that often, faced with a question he is uncertain of.), “I am not certain how to answer. I do not know anything else, Dean.”

“Why do y’all come out in the dark? Like fuckin’ ghosts, man. Why not the day?”

A tilt of the head, “Ghosts?”

“Spirits, monsters, come on, man. You’re gonna have to work with me, Cas, I don’t know what you call it.”

”Oh," Castiel says, "The supernatural. I have never seen such things. The answer to your other question is very simple. We were programmed to. We patrol the woods, keep the city safe.”

”Wait, programmed? By who?”

”Crake Industries,” Castiel says, "Men."

”The fuck is that?” He wonders. He thinks of the ship at the bottom of the lake. Father Noah has never talked about it.

”It is from Before.”

”Before the Flood?”

”The Flood?”

Dean shifts uncomfortably. He is quick to get the measure of things. ”I was told the earth was ruined in a Flood.”

”Oh no, Dean, ” Castiel says. ”It was not a flood.” The eyes sharpen in the soft light, "It was worse."

”What happened?”

It is fascinating to watch a machine process emotion. Dean knows metal. He knows iron and copper, silver and gold. None of them frown with ache, gently stoke a fire. The firelight glitters on Castiel’s silverskin. Dean stares at him. Castiel looks away. He cannot blush but the set of the shoulders is the same, the bob of his Adam’s apple on the tide of his throat. The tension in his back, the muscled-cut forearms, the shift of his hips. Dean knows. He is not alone.

Castiel tells Dean a Story.

* * *

A ghost story.

It had started with the neck. The swellings there at the lymph nodes right there at the jaw, there in the armpits, there at the groin. They grew to the size of small fruit. Figs sometimes, plums others. Like fruit, they went from hard to soft. At the end, you could not touch them without bursting. The sick grew in everyone. It filled their lungs with fluid, impossible to breathe. Some men died with their hands stretched out, drowning in open air.

The sailors were first, then their wives, then everyone. It did not matter. The pestilence did not judge the old or the young, the beautiful, the rich. It consumed them all in its hunger, swallowing them up, leaving only their bones after. Picked clean. The bodies piled up. Sometimes the scavengers got them, the wolves and the vultures.

It caught like a fire. It choked them like a flood. The disease came, unrelenting, for all. Like a flood, the water kept rising. They stood on their tiptoes to breathe.

The Others had no lungs to fill. The bacterium could not get inside their cells for they had no cells. So the Others buried the dead instead, dug the graves, fought off wolves with fingerbones in their jaws.

 _“The sailors brought in their bones a disease so violent that whoever spoke a word to them was infected and could in no way save himself from death... Those to whom the disease was transmitted by infection of the breath were stricken with pains all over the body and felt a terrible lassitude. There then appeared, on a thigh or an arm, a pustule like a lentil. From this the infection penetrated the body and violent bloody vomiting began. It lasted for a period of three days and there was no way of preventing its ending in death.”_ Castiel says, reciting something.

"What is that?" Dean asks, horror in his mouth, the back of his throat. He thinks of the Unspeakables, the same dread of their coming. The certainty of knowing your fate.

"An old story from an old letter."

* * *

Dean watches Castiel, who is formed in man’s image by man’s hands. He will never grow old, never grow tired. He will never be portly, never get sick and die. It is a strange sadness, immortality. The only separations are the strange, silvery color of Castiel’s skin, his blue-light eyes.

There is a long silence after the telling. They think about ghosts. Dean draws _Xs_ and _Os_ in the dust. Writes his own name with a stick. Breaks the stick in half.

“You've got a weird name there. Why Castiel?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, what's it mean? You got another story in you?”

Castiel pauses, “It is the name of an angel. I am an ANGEL, so my creator chose a name from the Bible."

"Not familiar, dude."

So Castiel tells him. "Once upon a time, there was nothing. And God made the Universe and the Earth, the stars and the sun, the angels and the dust. He made dark too, which came in with light. We don't know why. The angels were God's army, his staff, his right hand. They came down to Earth to do his bidding."

"With mankind?"

"Yes."

"So, you're here to do someone's bidding."

"Yes, Dean," Castiel says, "That is my programming."

Dean nods. It makes him feel sick. He draws circles in the dirt. He wonders what Sammy would think. Sammy and his papers and his parchment, his sharp eye. Sammy, who had crept into the Cathedral's library at night, when it is not open to the public, thirsty for books. Sammy will not be a farmer, no, not like Dean. Dean, who had inherited his father's farm, who brings gallnuts home to make iron-gall ink. Who brings squid home to steal their darkness. No, Sammy will be a monk in the Scriptorium. Yes, he is destined for great things.

Castiel shifts. His shirt rides up slightly. Why do machines wear clothes? Dean isn't certain. The fire glows bright on the reflection of his stomach, the triangle of bared silverskin. (He had always said that he, Dean Winchester, would never fall in love so, naturally, that was the very first thing he did.)

"I gotta ask, Cas, what the hell are you made of? You don't look like any metal I know."

"Titanium," Cas says, "A titanium mixture that was grown in a lab with human skin cells."

"What the fuck?”

Castiel shrugs, "I was an experiment." A slight hesitation, "I suspect they regretted it. I was given too much free will to question."

"How many Others are there?" He is curious, thinking of an army of silverskinned angels. He has always been afraid of the Others, now he craves to know. "Like you, I mean. You know - all _humanish_. Are all of them like you?"

"What do you mean?"

He doesn't know how to say it. "You know… _soft_?"

"No, none."

"What?"

"They're different. More stiff, I think you might say. Their bodies are a pure metal, not this hybrid. Their E.I. is less advanced."

"E.I.?"

"I'm sorry, Dean. Emotional Intelligence. They're simpler. Just titanium and processors."

"I've never heard of titanium."

"It is an old metal."

"Lost then, from Before?" He thinks of the things that Father Noah has told them in the Story. The long-lost achievements of human history. Greek fire, the New York Stock Exchange, Library of Alexandria. They are ancient and distant. We mourn lost things, we can sense them in our bones.

Dean aches for lost things, he aches for things never once had. He wants to touch the metal, the silversuit. He wants to know, like he has always wanted to know. Yes, his mother always says there is too much curiosity in him, that he would eat up the world. Castiel and his strange chemical composition, his stories about a world that Dean has never heard.

"What will you do?" Dean asks, "When I go back?"

"I will return to my charging station. I will run low on power by morning. Upload my data by opening my power cells and connecting to the network." Castiel looks up. "It is on the north side of the island."

Dean nods. He knows what an island is. Land surrounded by sea. It is an enclave of life, humans cannot live in the water. That is not our world, we have no right to it. Terminus Est is in the center of the island and none have ever been to shore, to the sea. Few have gone past the gates. Father Noah tells them to stay within, that it is safe within the walls and dangerous without. Dean has always starved for his curiosity, watching the river, knowing it winds somewhere out to sea. He has followed it to the edge of the forest, catching marsh frogs and river trout. Pulling lilypads, slapping mosquitos. At the treeline, he always stops. Watches it disappear.

Now, he is far past the treeline, deep in the forest. Aching to explore. Out to the far reaches, out to find the sea. The end of the river. (Castiel's dark mouth. Caves again.)

Castiel opens his mouth, hesitates. Speaks.

_" Between the desire  
_ _And the spasm  
_ _Between the potency  
_ _And the existence  
_ _Between the essence  
_ _And the descent  
_ _Falls the Shadow."_

"What is that?"

"A poem by T.S. Eliot."

"Do you know a lot of that stuff?"

"Yes."

"Tell me." (Is humanity a requirement of falling in love? Dean in a cave with a silverskinned man, listening to him recite very human things.)

* * *

The morning is white and misty, rolling in like a shroud. Dean watches as the sky is mixed with white paint, the gradual lightening as it moves through the stations of dawn. The gates will open soon, yes, open with the Matins prayer. He can perhaps listen to it over the reel of the land, the rise of the wall. Like he had heard the hymn the night before, he might hear the call to dawn now.

"I have to go back soon," Dean says. They both know it. It has sat between them for nearly twelve hours. Dean is safe, Castiel has kept him safe. Yet, something feels wild and underneath. It is under his skin. A virus, a bacteria, the hunger. He aches with the curiosity, sitting too close. (It is, sometimes, too easy to fall.)

"Yes, Dean."

He doesn't belong out here, in the trees. His farm is warming with the coming of dawn. There are horses to feed, the clay soil. The dry grass. He thinks of the broken fence at the edge of his farm, the tussocks of grass that the cattle nose at. The sparrows that land on their backs. Flies. Cow shit. Wasp nests and river muck. Prairie dogs. Spiders, sometimes. Their webs too.

His stomach growls. The bonegnaw ache of simple hunger. Staying out past Nox, he has missed dinner. His mother had made goulash. It is Thursday, her usual night for it. The pasta is cheap. Dean grows the wheat, the miller mills it, the cooks form it, dry it. His mother buying her own grain back at market. Transitions and changes. He thinks of the tinny, acidic taste of the tomato sauce. A bit of beef sometimes, if there had been an extra cow that year after the lord had taken his due. Pickled herring in a dish in the center. Eggs too.

Castiel leans back against the cave wall, sighing. Quiet and reflective. Dean's stomach growls. Hungry again.

Can you fall in love in an instant? Can you know that you have been in love all this time with someone you have never met? What is time? If we fall in love, can we spread it retroactively, back to our own births, our own conceptions, meaning that we have been in love since the start? In the beginning, there is light and there is love, you and I.

 _Fuck,_ Dean thinks. _Fuck._ (How did this happen? Perhaps he can blame magnets. If Dean has a magnetic polarity, is there any reason to doubt that the metal in Castiel would call to him? To his core, his veins, his bones, his very cells? Perhaps, strangely, it is the other way around. Castiel and his magnetic pole, reaching for the iron in Dean's blood.)

The gates in the distance. Past the cave, past the trees, past the river. Black and impassable. He had ached for home, now he aches to think of it.

_I want you._

* * *

Thursday, I don't want a ghost story, I want a love story.

_Keep listening. All ghost stories are love stories._

* * *

"I want to kiss you." _I shouldn't have said that. Shit._

Castiel swallows, his surprise on his face. Something wild and desperate in the cheekbones, the brows, the set of the jaw. Dean is a creature of touch, of impulse. _Yes, please. Let me kiss you._ He is a kinesthetic learner. He learns best by walking the streets, stirring the pot, getting his hands dirty. He looks at the rough beard threaded on Castiel's face. He wonders if it is this permanent length or if it is also half-human, grown in a lab. He wants to touch it, to learn it, feel the grit on his skin. Leave him red after. His face, his hands, his thighs. Perhaps that is the greatest part of humanity, that we are marked after we are touched. We can look back after making love, see where we were cherished.

"Dean, we cannot," Castiel says, his simulated breathing quick.

"Why?"

"It is not allowed."

"Who says?"

"My creator."

"Who made you?"

"Dr. Chuck Shurley." (It means nothing, this name. Dean gathers it up as he had once collected rocks along the riverbank. Puts it in his pail, marked _Castiel._ )

"Fuck him, where is he anyway?"

"Dead," says Castiel.

Dean nods slowly. "I'm sorry."

"It does not matter, Dean," Castiel says, "All men die. I have recorded his memory."

Bite the lip, grind the teeth. He shifts his hips, uncomfortable on the stone floor.

"Cas, I don't have a memory like you. Not like I think you do. But if - if I gotta go back, I won't really ever see you again, will I? Think of it like - like letting me record your memory, okay? Just once."

"Why?"

He clenches his teeth, his forced laugh, "I don't know, I'm probably half in love with you or somethin'. Stupid, right?" (Dean laughs often, mostly when he is serious.)

“You love me?” The tilt of the damnable head, the eyes flash imperceptibly brighter.

“Yes.”

“But how? I have no flesh, Dean.”

He has thought about this. Say he had a human lover who had been taken by the Unspeakables. Say his lover has been flayed, their skin removed, their flesh boiled, their bones pulverized to dust. Would he still love them then, only as spirit and ache? _Yes yes yes yes._

So he loves Castiel. Simple, really.

"It doesn't matter, Cas," he says. "It's about what's in you."

"What is that, Dean?" (How can lights be so bright? So blue? Dean has looked at fire, at the sun, at light, and has never seen emotion. Castiel's laser-blues are wide and wondering, this strange expression of light.)

"Ghosts, maybe," he whispers. He doesn't know. Castiel had told him what he was made out of, the words had bounced off of Dean's skin as impossible as a poem. Fibreglass and copper-clad laminate, plastic and steel. Castiel had patiently explained the old processes, some Dean knows, though he does not know how to build a man out of them. He knows the glass-blowers, culling glass from sand. He knows the blacksmiths and their open-cast copper mines. Castiel had said that he had been made partly from human hands, partly from silver hands like his own. The final diamond-cut pieces of his internal boards, he had said, were put there by flesh and blood. A man like Dean, once upon a time Before.

He wants to touch Castiel. He remembers Father Noah. _Man shall not lie with man as he does with a woman._ But Castiel is not man, he is man-shaped, machine-hearted. Where does machine end and man begin? What is allowed? It seems wrong, wanting the cool of the silverskin. (But Castiel is beautiful and machines are different than humans. If a man or a woman is beautiful, we can blame genetics. It is an accident. We threw our DNA in a pot and prayed for the best. Castiel is different, every piece was carved by loving, careful hands. The shade of his eyes was chosen deliberately. How can we not fall in love with our own creations of beauty?)

Bite the lip, swallow the spit, reach out. His fingers graze Castiel's cheek. Castiel leans into it. The low hum like a prayer. Dean does not know if he makes it from pleasure, if it's an internal whirring part. This strange machinery. It's hard to tell. Can a machine feel pleasure? It looks like it, the Neptune of his eyes.

"Is this - " Dean and his clumsy tongue. "Cas, you gotta tell me, is this okay - "

"Yes, Dean," Castiel says. Dean can hear the whisper under his voice. _I was made by human hands for human hands. You were not born yet, I waited for you._

They are standing in the dark. In the dark, you cannot tell that Castiel's skin is not skin but a strange analog. The only way Dean can tell is that it is not warm. Castiel is as cool as the sea, to touch him is to dive below the waves. Dean touches his hands to Cas' shoulders, his forearms, his waist. Castiel tastes like steel and oil, he tastes like Dean's own salt and spit. It makes sense to find pieces of yourself within a lover. We are all damaged, broken in places. Our love weaves into our other half, we take our own skin and sew them back up again. After, when we look back, what do we see but the one we love best made whole again with ourselves?

"Do you want to lay down?"

"Yes."

Dean pulls leaves together, soft weeds. In the back of the cave is a bed of lichen and moss. It is soft, the earth is soft. Warm there, the deeper you go, the warmer the earth is. They lay side by side for a long time. The night drifts on (some nights are endless). Dean and his curious hands, creeping over Castiel's own. He has no map but Castiel is open, his hands wide, saying _explore me,_ so he goes. Yes, start with the knuckles. He adds up the similarities, the differences. Man and machine, Dean and Castiel. He pulls gently at Castiel, who sparks, his mouth open, his eyes lighting up. Castiel over Dean, his weight a heavy pleasure. _I want to feel you. Hold me down. Tie me here._ (Castiel, mined from earth. Dean, who is too much of air and of water, always trying to disappear.)

"Can I touch you?" Castiel asks. There is reverence in his voice. As if Dean were the one named for an angel, as if Dean had been pieced together with care.

"Fuck _yes,_ Cas."

Castiel and his mouth, tasting for the first time. Dean doesn't know how he might be read to an inhuman being, but Castiel licks the sweat from his nose, his brow, his neck. Noses into that space behind his ear, where the rough of his beardstart ends, the soft of his hair begins. He is aching, ruined, desperate. He ruts up without meaning, trying to fuck the sky.

"I don't know how to touch you," Dean whispers. His fingers fumble at Castiel's neck, his bicep, his stormcloud hair. He does not know what is under his clothes. If he reaches past Castiel's waistband, he is uncertain of what he might find.

"Just follow me," Castiel says. As if that is all that matters. It is. Touch is not the end. Dean thinks of a story he had once heard Father Noah tell. Two women, Ruth and Naomi.

"Wherever you go, I'll go," Dean whispers, quiet and uncertain.  
  
" _Wherever you go, I will go; wherever you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried. Thus and more may the Lord do to me if anything but death part me from you,_ " Castiel echoes back, breathing it into the hollow of Dean's ear, as if he is afraid that given more space, it might bounce off, run away, disappear.

"I want you," Dean aches.

"You have me."

"Tell me stories, Cas,"

So Castiel does. He whispers them into the curve of Dean's neck. He licks them into the hollow of his throat, the space between his shoulder blades where wings might exist had he been an angel of the sky. The sides of his throat where gills might sprout if he takes on too much more water. Castiel and his stories of the past, all saying the same thing, _I love you, Dean Winchester._

(Do you believe in love at first sight? Not all things take time. Sometimes, we pull right up to the cliff, take a swan dive. The passionate do not even tie a rope on their ankles first.)

Castiel's strong, smooth hands dipping into the cave of Dean's hips, the escallonia bush between his thighs. (Dean is no virgin. He has fucked. He has had toss offs in the hay, taken women home to his bed. This is different. Castiel is metal but his hands are like ivy. _Hedera helix,_ common ivy, the long vines of his arms and hands questing and wrapping around Dean, pulling and turning. Ivy, evergreen; Castiel, eversilver.) He is found, sharp and hard as metal. Castiel's cool hands around his cock, working the slick of him, velvet to velvet touch. Castiel and his hybrid skin, working him like the pump at the cistern. Up and down, up and down. Dean aches, he writhes on the floor. _Yes yes yes god yes what the fuck, who are you, where did you come from, what are you doing to me? I will never forget you. I cannot leave you. Come away with me. We can stay here. Fuck, do that again, yes, just like that. Harder, please, god, Cas, what the fuck._ He tightens his eyes, his aphid-eyes, his snake-colored eyes. When he finally crests, it is like a wave, like being thrown into the air, like jumping from the white spire of the Cathedral into the sky.

"How the fuck do you know how to do that?" Dean breathes in the after.

Castiel only smiles, kissing the cord of Dean's throat, the hollow space of his chest. The sternum, close to his heart. "Some things you just know, Dean."

(The trouble is, the more time Dean spends with the earth, he can only think of the sea.)

"How long do you have on that power?" he asks, drawing rivers on Castiel's forearm. "You gotta recharge, right?"

"A few hours. And yes."

"And I need food."

Strange how a machine can look unhappy. Castiel's storm face, his still features. "You'll go back."

"We gotta."

"Of course."

"I mean," Dean says, "where else would we go?"

Castiel nods. Gravel-faced.

"I can't go back," he says. He is a man of gut decisions. "And we can't stay here." Castiel nods. Dean brushes his hair out of his face. It is a dark mop, like treebranches in the winter. A scribble of dark against an overcast sky. They are close to human hair but smoother. He wonders what they are made of. "Would you go with me, Cas?"

"Anywhere."

"In the world?" (What does this mean, the world? Dean doesn't know. He only knows this island and the sea.)

"Yes." (There is no hesitation.) Castiel blinks, looking up. His blue-light eyes like a beacon over water. "I would go anywhere with you, Dean."

"But you'll die."

"I can recharge. I have a battery pack. There is a generator on the boat."

"Boat?" He traces the curve of Castiel's hip, where the bones would be. The ilia, the sacral crest. He has never laid down after sex but everything in him aches. He lingers.

"On the north of the island," Castiel says, "That is where the boat is that Noah took."

* * *

Thursday, have you ever been in love?

_Yes. Once._

Tell me about it.

_I am._

* * *

Out there, only the sea.

“There’s no medicine out there, Dean,” Castiel says. His voice an unoiled engine.

“There’s no one to grease you up out there either, Slick.”

Castiel says nothing. The boat tips up and down in the gentle lap of the waves. Dean watches the way the dawn begins to ripple off of Castiel’s silverskin. It is like watching mercury.

The boat is north of the city. They had followed the river, skirting the edges. Dean knows that the river flows out south. Sam has always worried about Dean's penchant for wandering, for his curiosity about the dark parts of the map. Sam had packed Dean's bags, the extra scraps of parchment and squid-made ink. Dean had scratched out a note. _Kill it with those books, Sammy. I'm following the river to the sea. I'll come back for you sometime, promise. Take care of mom, okay?_ Sealed it up in a bottle, tossed it in the river. He knows the river, where it will catch in the pondweeds and the muskgrass. Sammy will look, he will find it.

Out there, the sea. It goes on forever. Once, there were oceans. He doesn’t know their names but Castiel has whispered them. _Atlantic, Pacific, Arctic, Indian._ Yet, here, he wonders which ocean’s corpse he is looking at, which rebirth. It does not seem dead. Perhaps it goes on forever; perhaps it does not.

Once upon a time, God had sent a flood.

The boat has enough rations for two months, if he is careful. Stocks of clean water. A catch for rain (we must always pray for rain on the open sea). A generator. Oil. Nets for fish. A single twin bed nailed to the wall. It is an old boat, this polyester and vinyl, nothing like the modernity of Dean’s iron and wood. It will have to do. It is from Before.

Look back at the city, the spires of Terminus Est. Here, at the silica sand beach of the island. Escallonia bushes. The little path to the inlet.

Look back here, the sun rising above the ocean. Castiel and the waves, their deep cool. So we must beat on. We must be sailors always.

* * *

Thursday, tell me, did they get on the boat?

_They did._

* * *

The boat sails for forty days and forty nights. It rains sometimes, it is sunny sometimes. Dean opens the bottles of wine and drinks them. Castiel tops himself up with the generator, those ancient solar panels. Sometimes, they harness the wind. The dried meat tastes like nothing but salt and leather. It doesn't matter. They make love on an ink-blue tarp. The sea goes on. There are no maps for this sea, no one has been here. They will make their own. Castiel makes notes on their progress. The position of the sun and the stars, the speed of the wind. Perhaps they have gone straight, perhaps they have doubled back, zigzagged, repeated themselves. He does not know. They have never done this before.

He learns about the boat. The rudder, the sail. The strange plastic equipment, tarps and buckets. This antiquated construction. He hopes it won't sink. He learns about aft and aloft. The anemometer to measure wind speed. That the auxiliary will power the boat when the wind fails. A clinometer to measure their heel. (Sailing is measurements. Dean and his aching curiosity, needing to know. He gathers his instruments up like a child at a holiday. They will tell him, yes, yes, yes.)

Dean loves the water, he has never seen so much water. There is no earth here, nothing to cling to but Castiel (who is metal, dug out from the earth). Castiel stands still at the bow of the boat, waiting. _Let me be your rock._

"Cas," he says. He has dipped his hands into the water, tasting them. He knows that the sea should be salty, like his blood, his sweat. It is not.

"Yes?"

"It's freshwater. Like the river."

"Are you sure, Dean?" Castiel furrows his brow at the ocean. "The sea is always saltwater."

"It's _pretty fuckin' not salty,_ buddy. I can drink it."

Cas lowers a cupped hand to the surface, tastes it. "You can. It is a lake."

A lake. Where in the world? A lake like a sea, its water cold as snow. An island and its boreal forest. Rivers and their trout. The timber wolves in the trees, the lynxes slinking past. Foxes and beavers, red squirrels and sandhill cranes. A thousand words for snow. Father Noah had told the Story, which had described places Dean has never been. When he has looked at the maps, he does not know where to place Egypt and its deserts, Israel and its palm trees. Terminus Est and her unnamed island, a lake like a sea.

They lay on the twin bed. It is tight, not made for two adults. Dean doesn't care, this is all he needs, the six inches allotted to him between Castiel and the wall. At night, he lays awake and listens to the rock of the waves. The gentle tides. Pitch back and forth. To Castiel's quiet machinery, whirring like a heartbeat.

"You smell like blood," Dean whispers. (He has always loved this about metal, the scent of blood.)

"That's an illusion, Dean, I have no blood." Yes, an illusion. "The oils on your skin break down when you touch metal, including me. What you're smelling is yourself." Yes, let us sense ourselves within each other. When Castiel is over Dean, reaching deep within him, Dean wonders if Castiel is counting his ribs from within, counting his two-hundred-and-six bones. Let us mix together, two parts bone and one part blue light. He likes to know that there is a part of Castiel that is himself. He hopes Castiel can look at him the same way, that he is keeping something of the Other safe.

 _I love you_. He doesn't know how to say it. He has already said it, so how can he explain how it twists through him? It chokes with weeds at times, rushes with rapids at others. His love is always clumsy. When he offers himself, it is with an apology. _I love you. I tried not to. I'm sorry._ He likes to kiss down the long path of Castiel's reflective body, worshipping at the altar of his hips, his thighs, the dusting of synthetic hair. He wonders what makes Castiel up inside. There cannot be bones but perhaps there is a skeleton fashioned out of metal. Perhaps oil runs through his systems like blood. Dean wants to open Castiel up (he will not), look inside at the inner workings, kiss those too. _I love you, I love you, I love you._

On the fortieth day, God sends them a dove.

"Land is nearby," Castiel says. Some birds fly far over the sea, doves are not one of them, preferring closer to home. Dean nods, swallowing. He likes to watch Castiel in the sun. They have always lived in the dark, in the trees, in the caves of the island. They had never been allowed the sun. In the sun, Castiel's skin shines bright as a coin, bright as a knife. When Castiel touches him, it feels like rain.

"We're nearly out of wine," Castiel says, his face scrunching. He is always concerned, always fussing. His constant tending to them, like a fire to be cared for, embers to be saved.

Dean laughs. He doesn't care. Not about the wine. He laughs like snowmelt bursting through the rivers in the spring. Joy. Freedom. Open air. _I love you._

Dean is air but his mother has always said there was too much water in him. He reaches out to the surface of the sea, seeing the stars reflected in it, scooping them up in his hands. His mouth on Castiel's, Castiel and his hands, the whirr of his processors, the stars of his eyes. This is the Beginning, here. The explosion of light, the sun and its reflection, scattered everywhere into the sky. The shiver of his skin. Castiel and his metallic chill. Dean shivers twice-over when he is touched. Cold, hot. All at once.

(They rock on the sea, watching the land. They have talked about the Before, lost to time, lost to stories. The After sits on Dean's mind. It sits in Castiel's fingers, which twitch in Dean's grasp. _Where do we go from here?_ We can tell stories of the past but never know our own futures. Some things are predictable. Dust to dust; ashes to ashes. Dean is blood and bone and skin. We borrow our time against the universe, our brief intervals blinking in the light. Castiel is on a longer installment plan. He has no cells, they will not age. His parts are replaceable. He does not fear entropy. _Don't think about After._ Just now, here, watching the horizon. Like all sailors know, the horizon will keep you steady. Keep aiming for the shore.)

Land. A new world. We will land and call it Plymouth Rock.

* * *

Thursday, how do you know?

_I remember. I was there._


End file.
